


Fair

by killerweasel



Series: A Fresh Start [2]
Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:11:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killerweasel/pseuds/killerweasel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a country fair and cows fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair

Title: Fair  
Fandom: The Lego Movie  
Characters: Bad Cop, Benny, Good Cop  
Word Count: 2,373  
Rating: PG  
A/N: AU after The Lego Movie  
Warnings: n/a  
Summary: In which there is a country fair and cows fly.

"I come here every year. It's sort of a family tradition I've been continuing." Benny held a plate with a large piece of fried dough in his hands. "There's a list of events over on that sign. If you see something you want to check out or do, let me know. I'll head us in the right direction.

Bad Cop looked at the sign. There were competitions for shearing sheep, the best cake, the best pie, numerous eating contests, pig racing, and the best vegetables. He frowned when he saw what was happening at noon. "What's a 'flying cow' contest?"

"That's where they take this fake cow and people throw it as far as they can. Whoever gets it the farthest wins." Benny stuffed a chunk of the fried dough into his mouth. "You should enter. I bet you'd win. You've had all that practice tossing chairs around."

_Go sign us up. I want to give it a try too. It'll be fun._

Bad Cop looked at the prize for the longest throw. The winner got free ice cream for a month from the local ice cream shop. "Looks like Good Cop and I will be tossing a cow around in an hour. Are you going to join us?"

"Sure, why not?" Benny tore the remaining fried dough in half and gave part of it to Bad Cop. "I need to save room for other junk food. Eat some of this for me."

"You're going to make yourself ill." Bad Cop nibbled on the dough. It had the perfect blend of sugar and cinnamon coating dough which almost seemed to melt when it touched his tongue.

"The sign-up booth is over in the middle of the fairgrounds." Benny led Bad Cop through rows of booths where people sold the various crafts they'd made. "I've been coming here since I was a kid. My parents used to enter pumpkins and tomatoes."

"Did they ever win anything?"

"One year my dad had the largest pumpkin. We carved it afterward and discovered I could fit inside. It was awesome." Benny waved at a couple of people who called his name. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

"More than I expected to." Bad Cop spotted a shooting game one of the top prizes was a stuffed alien the size of a small child.

_We'll do that next. It'll be fun._

The elderly woman running the sign-up booth smiled broadly when she saw Benny. "Benny! So nice to see you. Can you believe the turn out we have this year? I think we're going to break last year's record crowd."

"Mrs. Dewey is the youth librarian in town. I attended her storytime classes when I was a kid."

"He was always floating up to the ceiling. I ended up attaching one end of a piece of clothesline to my chair and the other end around his waist to keep him grounded." She turned her gaze to Bad Cop. "And who is this? I don't think I've seen you before."

"I'm Thomas Cop. Pleasure to meet you, Ma'am." Bad Cop shook her hand. "I'm staying with Benny for a while."

"We wanted to sign up for the flying cow contest." Benny scribbled his name on the paper Mrs. Dewey set down. "The two of us and Thomas' other half."

Good Cop came to the surface. "Hi. I'm Tommy." He was pleased when Mrs. Dewey barely reacted to his scribbled face. Taking the pen from Benny, he wrote his name down on the next line. When he finished, he switched back to Bad Cop. Bad Cop added his name to the list.

"Nice to meet you both. I have a nephew who does what you do." Mrs. Dewey smiled. "Alexander and Al. When we had to put new carpeting in at the library, they took turns helping me put things back into place. They're such wonderful boys."

"We're going to wander around until the contest starts." Benny rocked back on his heels. "I'll let my parents know I ran into you, Mrs. Dewey."

Bad Cop glanced at Benny as they headed towards the shooting game. The spaceman was floating a foot off the ground. His eyebrows shot up. "Do I need to grab some clothesline?"

"Whoops." Benny lowered himself back to the dirt. "Sometimes when I get excited, I forget to keep myself from drifting."

"We used to drive Mum and Pa crazy by climbing things. Got stuck up in the top of a very tall tree once and neither of us was brave enough to come down on our own. They ended up calling the fire department. A police officer showed up too. Once we'd been rescued, the officer put his hat on our head and told us we were very brave." A tiny smile crossed Bad Cop's lips. "Funny thing is, both our parents were police officers, but we didn't want to become one ourselves until that moment."

"You know, you could still be a police officer." Benny's voice was soft. He didn't want either of them to get upset like the last couple of times he'd brought it up. "It's part of who you are. And yeah, things got bad in Bricksburg, but you could be an officer somewhere else, somewhere people don't know you as Bad Cop and Good Cop. The sheriff is going to be going on maternity leave in a month and she won't be back for a while. Maybe you could fill in for her, see if you guys fit or not." He bit his lip. "You don't have to. It's just a thought."

"Is she here today?" The words popped out of Bad Cop's mouth before he could stop them. He felt a tickle of surprise from Good Cop in the back of his head. "Maybe we could talk to her about it."

"The emergency departments always have a raffle where they give away a bike or something for the kids so she should be in their booth. We can look for her after the cow thing."

They came to a stop in front of the shooting game. Bad Cop eyed the BB gun warily. It looked older than he was and he doubted the sight was accurate. He pulled a couple of dollars out of his pocket and set them next to the gun. "How many of those little ducks do I need to shoot to win something?"

The teenager behind the counter scratched the back of his head. "Three ducks gets you the tiny blue spaceship. Five ducks is the stuffed astronaut. And if you hit ten out of ten, then the giant green alien is yours, dude. No one has done better than five all day."

_You can do it. Blast those little ducks._

Bad Cop chuckled softly as he picked the gun up. "It's loaded and ready to go?" The teenager nodded. He took a deep breath to steady himself and then fired the first shot. The BB knocked a duck over. Everything else around him faded away for a few minutes as he methodically shot the ducks over one by one. He set the gun back down on the counter. "I'd like my alien now."

"That was awesome, man. You were in the zone or something." The teenager used a hook to grab one of the aliens from the top of the booth. "Here's your prize."

The alien was even larger up close. Bad Cop muttered under his breath as he picked it up. He turned to Benny, holding it out. "Here, this is for you."

Something crossed over Benny's face. It was there and gone so quickly Bad Cop thought he'd imagined it. "Oh, wow!" He gave the stuffed toy a cuddle. "I've never had anyone win me something before."

_You're blushing._

Bad Cop cleared his throat. "Anything else you want to look at before the competition starts, Benny?"

"Vegetable tent? I want to see how big the winning pumpkin is this year." He bounced the alien around. "Maybe someone finally beat my dad's record."

\---

"Welcome to the Tenth Annual Flying Cow competition! We have twenty-five participants this year. All the names have been mixed up in this hat and will be drawn out one by one. When you hear your name, please step up to the white line on the grass. Last year's winner, Allison Stevenson, will throw the first cow and show you how it's done."

Allison waved as she stepped out of the crowd. She grabbed the cow by the front legs, spun in a circle three times, and then let go. The cow soared through the air before crashing back down again. A flag was stuck in the ground to mark where the cow had landed. Then the official grabbed the cow and brought it back to the line on the grass for the first participant.

Benny’s name was called halfway through the contest. Bad Cop patted him on the back. “Good luck, Benny.”

“I’ll just be happy if the cow goes forward instead of backward like last year. You should have seen everyone duck to get out of the way.” Benny’s throw ended up going sideways, which caused a portion of the crowd to scramble out of the way before they were hit by flying bovine.

_Oh dear, that was almost disastrous. I hope my throw is better._

“Next up is Tommy Cop!”

"My turn." The cow was heavier than Good Cop expected, causing him to almost drop it on his foot. “Okay, here goes.” He did a double spin and flung the cow as hard as he could. It landed in the middle of the previous competitors’ flags. “Darn.”

“You went much further than I did.” Benny snorted. “I almost squashed Old Man Jenkins with the cow.”

Bad Cop was the final person to throw. He stared out at the flags in the grass. “Benny? How good is the ice cream they serve at that shop?”

“They own a dairy and make their own ice cream. There’s a banana split with five different flavors of ice cream, plus hot fudge, strawberries, pineapple, and whipped cream with a cherry on top.” Benny rubbed his stomach. “Even if you don’t win, I know where I want to go when we leave here.”

After twisting a little until his back popped, Bad Cop walked over to the line. He took the cow from the official. It wasn’t too much heavier than the chairs he used to toss around during interrogations. He thought about what Lord Business had done to his parents and to Good Cop and then channeled all the anger into his throw. The crowd gasped as the cow soared through the air. It hit the ground beyond all the flags.

“We have a winner! Thomas Cop will get free ice cream for a month at Lindon’s Dairy. Let’s all congratulate him on a job well done.”

Bad Cop suddenly found himself surrounded by strangers who were all patting him on the back or the shoulder. Everyone was smiling and no one was shouting anything rude in his direction. He suddenly felt lighter than he had in ages.

_That was amazing! Did you see how far that thing flew?_

Movement on Bad Cop's left caught his eye. He spotted Benny hovering above the crowd, motioning for Bad Cop to join him. It took Bad Cop a few minutes to make his way through all the people. When he found Benny again, the spaceman was standing next to a pregnant woman in a sheriff's uniform.

"This is Linda Holiday. Linda, this is Thomas Cop, the best cow thrower at the fair." Benny rocked back on his heels, smiling at both of them.

"Nice to meet you, Thomas." She shook Bad Cop's hand. "Benny told me you and your other half were the Chief of Police in Bricksburg for over a decade."

"That's correct." He glanced over at Benny. "We're going to be retiring at the end of the month. Right now we're using up our vacation hours."

_You need to relax. I doubt Benny mentioned our being in charge of the Secret Police. Even if he did, there are no records of its existence. But, we have an excellent record as Chief of Police._

"As you can see, I'm going to have to go on maternity leave soon. If you'd be interested in a temporary position, you can apply at the police station. We're taking applications for another week. " She checked her watch. "If you'll excuse me, I need to go judge the pie eating contest."

Benny waited until the sheriff had walked away before he nudged Bad Cop with his elbow. "Are you going to apply?"

"Maybe. We need to think about it."

"Want to check out the rest of the fair? We'll pick up your card for the ice cream before we leave." Benny scooped up his alien. "I'll carry Bob."

Bad Cop rolled his eyes as Benny made the alien wave at him. "I suppose he does look like a Bob."

They walked through the fairgrounds together. Bad Cop rubbed the back of his neck. "I need to thank you."

"For what?"

"For getting me out into the world again. I'd probably still be hiding away in my apartment if you hadn't come to check up on me. And then you were nice enough to let me stay at your place until I figure some things out. Most people wouldn't do any of that, especially not for someone like me." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "So... thank you."

"You did some really bad things, but I think that deep down, you're a good person. And maybe someday you'll see that too." Benny smiled. "Come on, I hear some deep fried cookies calling my name."

"They deep fry cookies?" Bad Cop tried to picture what that would look like. It was probably the unhealthiest snack food he'd ever heard of.

"Yup. It's like eating a chocolate cookie that's been wrapped in a doughnut, smothered in powered sugar." Benny rubbed his stomach. "They taste fantastic."

"That sounds like a cooking experiment gone horribly wrong, but I think I want to try one." Or possibly more than one. "Lead the way."


End file.
